A Turkish shave ...

This one's for the men, but the ladies in the viewing audience are welcome to continue reading. (It's PG, I swear.)

A few weeks ago I went a barber shop for a hair cut.

Towards the end of the hair cut, which was a good one I must say, the man asked me if I wanted a tashir, which means shave in Turkish.

A shave. And not any kind of electric razor, but a good old fashioned open blade shave.

The moment the barber started applying the warm foam with a soft brush, I was in heaven. It was an instantly gratifying experience only to be had in Turkey.

I know some American barber shops still do this - but they are rare. In America the barber shops that give a shave are the kind you talk about with your friends.

Women in America may not know this, but when a man, and of course this is what separates the men from the boys, finds this kind of barber shop in the states, they tell their friends.

"Hey, I found a place that does an old fashioned shave."

I feel sorry for any man that hasn't had this experience. It's worth finding.

It begins with the barber taking a soft brush into a cup that contains shaving soap and lathering that soap onto your face. The soap is warm and feels good as he brushes it into your facial stubs and hair.

Then comes the razor. The closest, best shave a man will ever have comes from an open razor.

The Turkish barbers who do this are artists. They move the razor with the grain of each part of a mans face. They know the delicate balance between a close shave and razor burn. Each time shave a man they straddle this fine line, but almost never give into the red skin that comes from shaving too hard.

When the shave is over, they remove the remaining suds with a warm towel.

When the process is complete, it is almost like I've been reborn. I honestly feel like a new, improved James at the end of a shave.

Following the shave, a Turkish tradition, we drink tea and smoke cigarettes.

A real barber shop. A place where men can be men and women don't dare step foot.

America needs more of these. If anything, it would help a country of men to reclaim their masculinity - all while looking and feeling like a million bucks.

That's the week the water went out in Izmit ...

The water's been out off an on this week.

It's made for some interesting mornings.

Here in the Kocaeli region, and Izmit where I live, there is a shortage of water in the reservoir - or so I'm told. Anything concrete about the water shortage is in Turkish, therefore, difficult for me to understand.

So for the time being, which could be for the rest of December from what I've heard, the water is off in irregular intervals. The definite time we are supposed to have water is Midnight to 8 a.m.

The worst mornings are the ones when we forget to prefill our kettle the night before with water.

Imagine this people: You wake up, try to splash some cold water on your face - and none is there. You turn the faucet handle and nothing comes out.

So you head to the kitchen to turn on the kettle, but there's no water in it. Damn. Forgetting about the lack of bathroom water, you head to the sink and turn the handle. Nothing comes out. Oh yeah, there's no water.

The water shortage only affects houses and not businesses, so I brush my teeth and comb my hair at school.

Even though I walk out of my apartment feeling kind of gross, there's about 1,000,000 people in my region who are in the same waterless boat. It's quite common to see people with messed up hair or without a shave in the past few days. The city has kind of banded together in a filthy solidarity. Most of my students look less unkempt than previous weeks and we joke about not having water.

"Su yok?" Which means, "No water?"

Surprisingly, the worst part about the water isn't the absence of regular showers or morning tea. It's the irregularity of having water. Some mornings its on. Most mornings its not. We're supposed to be guaranteed water Midnight through 8 p.m., but that's not always the case. For the last two night we didn't have water. At least not while I was awake.
We never know when we are going to have water until we turn the handles.

The water's on right now (Saturday, 10:15 p.m. local time) and I'm going to take a shower for the first time in three days.

An open letter to Santa Claus ...

On Friday, I taught a class of 10- to 12-year-olds what Santa Claus was and how Americans celebrate Christmas. The bulk of the lesson focused on decorating the tree, a pointless exercise that had no value for learning English. It did pass the time nicely, however.

But it didn't pass all of the time.

I had the class for one hour and 45 minutes and the Christmas Tree only took up one hour and 30 minutes. Damn!

I needed something to run out the clock. It was the fourth quarter and I wasn't able to take a knee yet (ask the students what they're doing this weekend, kills five minutes easily.)

So I had the kids imagine they lived in America and told them to write to Santa. Tell him if they've been good and what they want.

As the students wrote, I decided I would pen my own letter to Santa.

Here it is:

Dear Santa,

I don't believe in you and you don't believe in me, but I need to kill time too.

So have I been good? Well, I haven't been evil.
I could have pulled a lot of shit this year Santa.
There were countless times I could have killed someone, but never acted on the impulse or desire.

Therefore, I was good. After all, if you're going to be an asshole and make good and bad a black and white issue, I'll play.

So what do I want?

There's a lot of things I could ask for, but I don't really want much. Just one thing.

A midget.

Oh Santa, if you could spare just one of your Elves to become my personal valet, I would be forever grateful.

There would be nothing perverted, either. It would strictly be your elf walking with me wherever I go, dancing for my amusement and fighting children at parks. Also I would insist the elf smokes a cigar. Cigar smoking midgets are the best.

So Santa, what do you say? If you do this, I will dedicate my life to doing good deeds, rather than expanding the list of countries I've vomited in (four so far and growing).

Best wishes and a Happy Festivus, from one fat ass to another,

James

Just when I thought there would be no Christmas ...

Many of you may know I hate the holidays.

I just don't care for all the commercialized appeal of Christmas, though I admire the companies that make a point to not mention the word and opt for "Happy Holidays."

I don't like the crowds everywhere you go, hate the fact that governments shut down for 14 days for a damned "holiday season" and the whole United States seems to stop dead in its tracks because, "it's Christmas."

I hate the fact that all the regular TV shows I would want to watch are postponed so crappy Christmas specials can be shown, with the exception of a Bing Crosby taking a break from beating one of his children to sing "Little Drummer Boy" with David Bowie.

So I've been relatively happy living in a Muslim country this year where people don't even know what Christmas means.

It's been nice walking down the street unpolluted with decorations that have been up since October about special "Holiday Bargains."

It's been nice not hearing the Christian Evangelicals piss and moan because stores choose to not celebrate their religious holiday, opting for a secular version that people used to enjoy, as they call for boycotts.

And it's been nice not having to get up on a ladder and deal with heights that frighten me every other day of the year to put up lights. (Sorry Mom, but you know I hate doing that.)

The only thing I miss is the food and an excuse to wear a cheesy sweater (which we really should stop making Christmas an excuse for. But my proposed "Bill Cosby Day" has yet to be taken seriously by any member of Congress, so Christmas will have to do.)

But then I opened the circular advertisement for Migros, a large chain of stores here in Turkey, to see fucking Christmas decorations.

"What the hell are these doing here?" I angrily asked my school's principal.

She explained those decorations, such as a tree with ornaments and lights, pictures of Santa Claus and shit like bells and tinsel, are for New Years.

Many of you may know, years ago, I gave up celebrating Christmas and took to the holiday of Festivus. I haven't looked back.

But I thought I would miss Christmas entirely here in a secular Muslim country. What the hell?

Besides, New Years is all about booze, Auld Lang Syne and Dick Clark, may he rest in peace. (He's dead right?)

(Informal prediction: More than 60 percent of you reading this do not know without the use of Google whether Dick Clark is still alive.)

I feel like standing in the middle of the town center and shouting, "This wasn't part of the deal."

But there I was teaching a class full of 10-12 year olds Friday afternoon and needing something that could grab their attention. Any subject, as long as we're speaking English, and preferably using large numbers, colors and country names they've learned about in the last few weeks.

Fine. We'll learn about Christmas.

Since their vocabulary is somewhat limited and I refuse to speak Turkish in class, I left out the whole message about Jesus' Birth, which any Discovery, National Geographic or History Channel documentary will tell you really happened somewhere around March to June.

We talked briefly about Santa Claus, then I drew a ghetto Holiday Tree (take that Religious Right) on the board and had students make ornaments they placed on there.

The lesson wasn't all that educational, but it killed an hour and a half.

Christmas had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The instant anger I felt looking at the shopping advertisement was gone, and I realized the true meaning of Christmas.

Exploiting it for whatever you want.


Happy Festivus,

James


P.S. In the next issue of LoughrieDoesTurkey, an open letter to Santa Claus.

Dance Monkeys, Dance!

Today was picture day at my school.

Now don't go getting these nostalgic images of grade school pictures in your head. We have picture days a few times a year and they almost always involve the "native" speakers.

That's me and two other teachers who use English as their, "Native" Language.

I've been here over three months but anytime I hear native I still think one of two things. 1) The Turkish people who teach English at the school, who are more native to this land than I. And 2) Gilligan's Island references about the Native headhunters.

For the school, however, having native English speakers is viewed as "marketing" so they like us to be around and speak English and even like to parade us around.

Today was one of the days each year when they took pictures of Maweja, my Illinois-Native roommate, and I teaching students. We weren't actually teaching, but acting like we were teaching a group of students who were acting like they were interested in what we had to say.

I was every bit the white version of Sidney Poitier in Blackboard Jungle as I stood in front of the camera and pointed to words on a page. (I'd call myself Mr. Chips, but would anybody get that?)

As we stood there posing for pictures, I remarked to Maweja that we are like monkeys at the zoo. "Look, he has blue eyes."
"Look, he has tattoos."

I don't have a problem with that, it's actually fun on some days. There's a bit of celebrity status that comes in my town with being an American and teaching English. People smile and say, "Very Nice," like it means something special to any of us.

Suckers.